Via bitsandpieces
comcast
Via Elliott
Here’s yet another reason to join the cord-cutting revolution.
A man in Spokane, Washington was surprised to find out that Comcast had changed his name from Ricardo Brown to “a**hole” Brown on his most recent bill.
He and his wife Lisa had been trying to cancel their cable subscription with the company, which should have been a very simple process.
But it was not.
They first reported the issue to consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, who wrote:
Instead of complying immediately, a representative escalated her call to a retention specialist, who tried to persuade her to keep the cable service and sign a new two-year contract.
His wife said she was not being rude, but the Comcast customer service agent decided to get back at them for not taking the offer in the most passive aggressive and childish way possible.
Elliot spoke with a Comcast rep who eventually apologized.
“We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” he said. “We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”
The company also promised to fire the employee responsible and has offered to both waive the $60 cable cancellation fee (how generous) and provide a refund of their two years of cable service.
Via Sweetlethargy
WARNING: This video is a bit long, and might send you into a frothing fury. Fair warning.
Via Ars Technica
The Consumerist reports that a man known as Conal complained to Comcast after he was billed for services he didn't actually have. After Conal's complaint, the company promised him extra television channels as a make-good but instead sent him a variety of equipment he didn't need.
Conal complained to Comcast again after he was billed $1,820 for the surplus hardware. This is where things get interesting. Conal, who says he works for a large American accountancy firm, compiled a spreadsheet showing every erroneous charge he had received from Comcast, which he sent to the company.
Comcast then apparently refused to reverse the error, so in February 2014, Conal decided to try something else. Being an accountant, Conal contacted Comcast's comptroller, the office that looks after the company accounts. He said he repeatedly called them about his bill, telling them that Comcast should be investigated by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
The Consumerist says that after this, Comcast got in touch with Conal's employer.
At some point shortly after that call, someone from Comcast contacted a partner at the firm to discuss Conal. This led to an ethics investigation and Conal's subsequent dismissal from his job; a job where he says he'd only received positive feedback and reviews for his work.
Terrible customer service from Comcast has itself become a meme and was recently highlighted by making a man wait on hold until the office closed and by a customer service rep refusing to cancel a man's service.
Read the full story at Ars Technica.
Via Ryan Block
The sad thing is that this is already 10 minutes into the conversation according to the caller:
This recording picks up roughly 10 minutes into the call, whereby my wife and I have already played along and given a myriad of reasons and explanations as to why we are canceling (which is why I simply stopped answering the rep's repeated question -- it was clear the only sufficient answer was "Okay, please don't disconnect our service after all.").
Via Reddit
Was sawing the wall away really necessary? I'll tell you what's "necessary:" putting the wall back!
